Harald Bretschneider

Harald Bretschneider (born July 30, 1942 in Dresden ) is a Protestant pastor and was a representative of the church peace, environmental protection and human rights movement in the GDR .

Life

Because of the destruction of Dresden in World War II , Bretschneider grew up in Leisnig / Saxony. After finishing school he wanted to become an architect, which he was denied, so he studied theology at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig from 1960 to 1965 . Before he entered the service of the church, he wanted to know “ whether God's vitality was shown among the unbelieving construction workers ” and began an apprenticeship as a carpenter at the Magdeburg special building combine . 1966-1967 he was construction soldier in the NVA and then continued working in construction kombinat .

In 1969 Harald Bretschneider took part in a preparatory seminar in Leipzig and then took over his first pastor in Wittgendorf near Zittau. His main focus was on child and youth work . Here he was already involved in the production of the sound-image series “No small people, no great wars”, an aid to dealing with military service, around 1969/70. He was and remained one of the most important activists in church peace work .

In 1979, after ten years in his community, Bretschneider was elected regional youth pastor and appointed by the church leadership of the Evangelical Lutheran regional church of Saxony. Internationally, this time was marked by a new phase of military confrontations and nuclear armament; In the GDR, the party and state leadership pushed for the militarization of the population (especially children and young people). Bretschneider founded several church peace groups and organized meetings in Karl-Marx-Stadt , which brought him to be treated as a hostile-negative person by the state security service in the OV "Brett". In the autumn of 1980 he developed the symbols “ Swords to Plowshares ” and “ Making Peace Without Weapons ”, had them printed on fleece rolls as bookmarks in Herrnhut without authorization and initiated the implementation of the first decade of peace in the GDR in November 1980.

The memorial “Swords into plowshares - stones of impetus for a movement that changed the country” in front of the south portal of the Kreuzkirche, installed in 2010 to commemorate February 13, 1982

On February 13, 1982, in view of the increasing militarization of everyday life in the GDR , Dresden's Christians had called for a gathering at the ruins of the Frauenkirche with illegal leaflets . There the destruction of Dresden should be commemorated. Harald Bretschneider was the conversation partner for the Saxon regional church and also the initiators and played a key role in the preparation of the legal alternative event. This took place under the title “ Forum Peace ” in the Kreuzkirche and, with over 5,000 mostly young people, became the largest event of the peace movement critical of the state in the GDR .

There were conflicts with the church leadership when Harald Bretschneider discussed the SED's monopoly of power in the GDR in 1985 .

Since 1987 Bretschneider has been significantly involved in the preparation of the meeting of church peace, environmental and human rights groups “ Peace in Practice ” in Leipzig . At the same time he was working on the conception of a civil service in the GDR, which he helped to introduce in 1990. In the fall of 1989 he was the liaison man of the opposition groups in Leipzig and Dresden, looked after detained participants in the Monday demonstrations and worked in the group of 20 . 1991–1997 he was the head of the Dresden city mission and until July 2007 the senior church councilor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony as successor to the murdered Roland Adolph .

Bretschneider was 1998-2007 Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation Protestant University of Applied Sciences in Dresden . He retired on July 10, 2007. He is still active, among other things, as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Dresden Civic Foundation and as chairman of the association “Faith, Courage and Freedom - Christians in the GDR and afterwards”, which was founded in 2018 and is based in Brandenburg an der Havel.

Honors

On May 22, 2004 he was awarded the Saxon Constitutional Medal by Landtag President Erich Iltgen “for his commitment as a youth pastor in the former GDR” .

For his commitment to the “ peaceful revolution in the GDR ” and his participation in the swords to plowshares peace movement , Bretschneider was awarded the Martin Luther Medal awarded by the Evangelical Church in Germany in October 2011 . The laudation was given by Federal Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière , and the award was presented by the Chairman of the EKD Council, Nikolaus Schneider .

On October 4, 2012, on the occasion of the Day of German Unity , Bretschneider was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st Class, by Federal President Joachim Gauck for extraordinary commitment to church peace and youth work . In addition, his commitment to the state youth association, for the establishment of Protestant schools and for partnerships with Eastern European communities was recognized.

Publications

For heaven's sake, don't give up the earth - swords into plowshares (autobiography), Manuela Kinzel Verlag, Dessau 2016, ISBN 978-3-937367-85-9 .
The miracle of freedom and unity. With contemporary witnesses on the path of the Peaceful Revolution (as co-editor), SCM Hänssler, Holzgerlingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-7751-5574-8 .

literature

Klaus Ehring (pseudonym of Hubertus Knabe ) / Martin Dallwitz (pseudonym of Ulrich Mickan ): Swords to plowshares. Peace movement in the GDR. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg, 1982, ISBN 3-499-15019-0 .
Sebastian Engelbrecht: Church leadership in the GDR. A study of political communication in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony 1971–1989 . (Works on the history of the church and theology, Vol. 6) (Zugl .: Leipzig, Univ., Diss., 1999) Leipzig, Evangelische Verlags-Anstalt, 2000, ISBN 3-374-01798-3 .
Ralf Evers (Hrsg.): Justice and Peace: Contributions and memories from the Evangelical University for Social Work Dresden (Festschrift on the occasion of the adoption of Oberlandeskirchenrat Harald Bretschneider), Hille, Dresden 2008.

Web links

Literature by and about Harald Bretschneider in the catalog of the German National Library
Works by and about Harald Bretschneider in the German Digital Library
Short biography for: Bretschneider, Harald . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Documentary film

The Cross with Peace - Christians and War . A film by Ingo Helm, ZDF, 2018, from 34:05 pm Harald Bretschneider about the peace movement in the GDR that is critical of the state.
FAKT magazine in mdr on February 12, 2019: Dresden on February 13, 1989 - Demonstration for reforms with Gesine Oltmanns and Rainer Müller from the Leipzig Justice Working Group and with Roland Jahn and Harald Bretschneider.

Individual evidence

↑ Farewell to Harald Bretschneider in retirement ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Evangelical Lutheran Church in Saxony, July 9, 2007, accessed August 26, 2014) @1@ 2

↑ Annett Ebischbach (alias Johanna), Oliver Kloss and Torsten Schenk: Call for an illegal gathering on February 13, 1982 at the ruins of the Frauenkirche in Dresden (text in the print version by Elke Schanz and Heike Kerstan).

↑ Oliver Kloss : The Dresden Call for February 13, 1982 , in: Forum Politikunterricht , Heft 1 (2013). Edited by the German Association for Political Education - State Association of Bavaria, ISSN 0941-5874, p. 41 f. On the part of the MfS the action was processed in the OV "Ruine" of the district administration of the MfS Dresden . The OV name "Ruine" alluded to the condition of the Frauenkirche, which had once been declared a memorial to the Second World War in its destroyed form.

↑ The event was reported with images in the evening news of western television stations, in newspapers and magazines - e.g. B. Spiegel, Issue 8 (1982) from February 22, 1982: GDR: Diligent signatures. The SED worries about a new protest movement in the GDR: Young people demonstrate by the thousands against armaments and militarism . P. 28–31 - as well as promptly documented in book form: Klaus Ehring , Martin Dallwitz : Schwerter zu Pflugscharen. Peace Movement in the GDR , Reinbek near Hamburg, Rowohlt, 1982, ISBN 3-499-15019-0 ; Wolfgang Büscher, Peter Wensierski , Klaus Wolschner, Reinhard Henkys (eds.): Peace movement in the GDR. Texts 1978–1982 , Hattingen, Scandica, 1982, ISBN 3-88473-019-3 , pp. 265-281.

↑ Peaceful Revolution: MDR shows documentaries about Christians in the opposition , idea.de, article from October 2, 2019.